Did Obama make a joke about oral sex?

Poor President Obama. He probably had some explaining to do to the First Lady.

Even if it appears he was misinterpreted.

The blogosphere has been all a-buzz over a joke Obama made Wednesday at a Beverly Hills fundraiser with supporters of the LGBT Leadership Council. (The L.A. Times called it a “gathering off the “who’s who of gay Hollywood”). The quip was about Michelle Obama doing push-ups on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” but it was interpreted as a crack about oral sex.

“I want to thank my wonderful friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in pushups — (laughter) — but I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down. (Laughter.) That’s what I heard. I just want to set the record straight — Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well. (Laughter.) So she shouldn’t feel bad. She’s an extraordinary talent and she’s just a dear, dear friend — Ellen DeGeneres. Give Ellen a big round of applause.”

The audience heard “all the way down” and started chuckling, then guffawing. Pool reporter Todd Gilman of the Dallas Morning News wrote it was “a line that (Obama) let hang, naughtily, provoking laughter from the crowd.”

You can watch the video here. It seems Obama’s brief pause was more due to his hearing the audience reaction, then realizing how his remarks could be interpreted in an off-color way. He clearly looks uncomfortable although keeps a straight face, and goes on about push-ups as if to clarify he didn’t intend a double-entendre. Oliver Burkman had a similar analysis in The Guardian:

“Obama makes an innocuous remark; the audience sees the potential for it to be interpreted in an off-colour way; they laugh; Obama realises the problem, and then heavy-handedly goes on about push-ups for a couple more sentences in an effort to reinforce the point that that’s what he meant. (He knows, of course, that he can’t explicitly refer to the misinterpretation – that would make things worse.)”

Yet, it was fodder for conservatives, and the blogosphere has been in a frenzy: “Obama blows it: Tells an oral sex joke about his wife,” reads one headline.

As Burkeman writes:

“I trust it’s obvious that none of this would matter even infinitesimally if it didn’t play into the popular right-wing meme about Obama being a classless, loutish, “unpresidential” elitist, who spends his evenings making dirty jokes with the gays in Hollywood, while ordinary, hardworking, primarily heterosexual Americans are … [you can complete the rest of this sentence yourself].”

As to whether Michelle Obama can do more push-ups than Ellen, well, here is the video: